FROM MY FRONT PORCH

FROM MY FRONT PORCH

Who can understand the real reason we bite our lip or stub our toe?

SAM HOUSTON

Sam Houston is the publisher of the Hood County News. He is also an actor, author, playwright, performer and entertainment producer/promoter.

Life is made up of a series of routine or repeated tasks. Since the age of 16 or 17, I have shaved most every morning. Getting dressed, I always put my right sock on first and then my left, but curiously put on my left shoe before the right. I consume a single large cup of coffee when I first wake up, and then drink several more once I arrive at the office. I make sure I have a pen in my shirt pocket, and I almost always wear a watch.

All these acts are normal everyday tasks, which over the years have become my habit or routine. Since I am currently 65 years old, by estimate I have shaved nearly 17,720 times, put on a pair of shoes more than 23,725 times and drank more than 54,750 cups of coffee. Most of these actions occurred without negative consequences.

We never consider how many times we breathe each day, blink our eyes or lick our lips. They are natural acts that we commit without a conscious thought. Humans breathe on average 15 times a minute, which means I have drawn a breath over 512,460,00 times! Most of these breaths were drawn with no conscious thought: my body simply performed the task. Remarkable!

So, tell me, how is it with the hundreds of thousands of times I have eaten and chewed food, I occasionally manage to bite my lip? What demon takes over my brain and somehow interrupts the normal, routine process of chewing, and suddenly causes my teeth to jump to one side of my mouth and snag a piece of my cheek or a lip?

Is it a political conspiracy or an alien invader who interrupts the solace of the universe to affect my biorhythms and cause such a seemingly random act? I can be having a ham and cheese sandwich, chewing away as usual, and “WHAM,” the next thing you know I just got a bite of lip! It hurts, and the worst part is trying to understand why it happened in the first place. What made my mind jump off the tracks like a runaway, out-of-control train? Surely there must be someone or something to blame for this sudden biological malfunction.

I have walked from the bathroom to my bed thousands of times. I am very familiar with each piece of furniture in the room, how the room is laid out, and the distance from the doorway to where I slide into bed. I regularly make the journey without incident or giving way to the evil forces that might cause action contrary to norm. So why are there occasions when my foot suddenly decides to introduce one of my toes to the framework of the bed and do so with such vigor as to make it feel like my toe was just hit with a 40-pound sledgehammer? I cannot imagine what wrong my toes have committed to lead my brain to punish my foot with such apparent lack of mercy or sympathy. Why do we stub our toe?

It would seem in life, we have habits and routines where we operate comfortably, but for some unexplainable reason, we occasionally inflict pain upon ourselves. No matter how much we prepare, how much we plan, or how we try to train our mind, we will still occasionally have an issue. Some of the pain is just fate, or bad luck. Some of it is simply the forces of the universe that make us wonder how much control we really have.

 Don’t even get me started talking about having the hiccups!

Thought for the day: When people tell me I am going to regret something in the morning, I always sleep until noon, because I am a problem solver.

sam@hcnews.com | 817-573-7066, ext. 260